Despite the fact her son is just 11, and suffers from learning difficulties, the boy's mother was quite happy for him to describe his experience, and for his photograph to be splashed across both the paper and its website. I wonder why?
Back-to-front logic here.
If it was a put-up job, would it be splashed all over the sponsoring newspaper ? Yes, of course.
If it's splashed all over a newspaper, does that mean they sponsored the escapade ? No. They might have, but so far there's not a shred of evidence to support that theory.
All we can reasonably infer is that the mother was happy to go public and was probably paid well for her trouble.
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc ...